


awake (asleep)

by Ink_stained_quills



Category: Haikyuu!!
Genre: Dream Travelers, Inception AU, M/M, Osuna, Rarepair, kind of
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-11-03
Updated: 2020-11-03
Packaged: 2021-03-08 19:27:51
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,036
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27371917
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Ink_stained_quills/pseuds/Ink_stained_quills
Summary: Suna tells Osamu that he “feels like how the wind bites in the winter”, right when January hits.Osamu looks at him, into his unfathomable eyes, and tells himself he won’t visit anyone’s dreams tonight.It’s a promise he already knows he won’t keep.
Relationships: Miya Atsumu & Miya Osamu, Miya Osamu & Suna Rintarou, Miya Osamu/Suna Rintarou
Kudos: 35





	awake (asleep)

**Author's Note:**

> Shipping is semi light, so by all means view it as platonic if you like! However, it should hopefully be conveyed that there's... something going on
> 
> I was going for a certain vibe here. I can't really explain it, but I think that's the point? If you got a vibe you can describe, consider shooting me a message!
> 
> The T is just cause the twins swear. Shocker, I know. This is the first time I've written any of this team, so!

Suna tells Osamu that he “feels like how the wind bites in the winter”, right when January hits.

Osamu looks at him, into his unfathomable eyes, and tells himself he won’t visit anyone’s dreams tonight. 

It’s a promise he already knows he won’t keep.

He ends up in Atsumu’s, this time. His twin is sitting on the bleachers of the court, staring from the sidelines, as their battle against Karasuno plays. The winning point is scored, and the scene flickers for a moment. Then it starts again.

Atsumu looks up, unsurprised. Osamu supposed he shouldn’t be, at this point - he’s visited Atsumu’s dreams enough over the years. Proximity does wonders. “Geez. Thought you weren’t doing this anymore?”

Osamu pointedly ignores him. “Dontcha think this is a dumb thing ta obsess over, ‘Sumu?”

“Dontcha think you should be in yer own head?” Atsumu retorts, eyes moving back to the court. Slowly, their teammates flicker out, and at last only Atsumu remains to battle Karasuno.

He shrugs. It’s a hypothetical, and they both know it.

His twin sighs, a sharp, short burst. “I don’t understand why yer so insistent on stopping, anyway. If I could dream travel -”

“- but ya can’t,” Osamu cuts him off before they grind the rut of this argument deeper. “Ya don’t know what it’s like.”

“I know yer not yerself when ya stay in your own skin.” Atsumu observes, watching himself set to invisible figures.

Osamu scrapes his foot against the ground. “Cuz I’m somebody else. Every time I get into somebody’s head, I’m them.”

“But ya can’t stay away.” Another sigh. “”Samu, ya come into my head and annoy me just the same as ya do when yer outta it.”

“That’s different,” Osamu feels compelled to say. Atsumu didn’t feel the inexorable pull. “I’m goin’.”

“Don’t check in on mom tonight,” Atsumu advises absently, narrowing his eyes as the court flickers. “Think I’m leavin’ this one, anyhow. Better hurry.”

Osamu walks over to the gym exit, watching tendrils of white nothingness fragment the dream, and leaves. There’s the split second of bitter cold transitioning, then he finds himself back in his own head. As always, it’s dark.

He doesn’t dream, that’s the issue. Osamu’s not sure if it’s because of his power or in spite of it, but no matter how long he sleeps, he doesn’t dream.

His skin stings. The pull of dreams tug at him, but it’s lessened somewhat by virtue of visiting Atsumu. Atsumu’s always easiest to visit - his mind isn’t like Osamu’s, but it’s familiar from years of proximity and travelling (accidental at first, then intentional).

The tweaking of his mother’s dream plucks at him.

_”Don’t check in on mom tonight.”_

Osamu thinks, sometimes, that Atsumu can do more than he’s aware of. Osamu travels, but Atsumu _knows_ things that Osamu doesn’t. It’s Atsumu who advises him to sit far away from Kita after they lose to Karasuno, because his mind will draw him in. It’s Atsumu who can take one look at their mother and know that her sleep will be drug induced, and therefore dangerous to travel into. It’s Atsumu who’d looked at Suna and said _he gives me the creeps_.

“You two are like an arctic front,” Atsumu complains sometimes, rubbing his arms obnoxiously.

Suna’s eyes are narrow and light, and seem to observe more than he shows. When Osamu first saw him, he’d wondered what it was like inside his head. Quiet, probably.

Before he’d started trying to control his travelling, he’d slipped into the team’s minds by accident. They’d been two days into a training camp, and the other teams’ dreams were pulling him in different directions, and he’d felt like his mind was coming apart at the seams.

So he’d sought out the most familiar mind - Atsumu’s - and edged in.

“For fuck’s sake, ‘Samu, give me some warnin’!” Atsumu yelped, diving out of the way. “Droppin’ onto a guy’s head like that ‘s rude!”

“Sorry,” he’d gasped, clutching his head, and the presence of other minds eased. Atsumu, especially, had a way of swallowing the other dream threads. “Lotta people.”

His twin had pulled a face, eyeing their surroundings. A symphony swelled. “Guess this ain’t gonna help.”

“Nothin’ you can do about it.” Osamu waved him off. “‘S fine.”

“My dream, my rules!” Atsumu had declared, fixing his gaze on the maestro. “Get outta here!”

The music rolled on, visibly washing over them, and Osamu exhaled in a laugh. “Ya don’t have control over yer dreams like that. Nobody does.”

“Gah!” The setter growled. “Funny rules ya got there.”

The smile had faded. “They’re not my rules.”

“Maybe ya should go see somebody else,” Atsumu had suggested. “Not _see_ em, see em, but visit. Getcherself used to em.”

“Ya just want me outta yer head.”

“‘Course. I’m not that nice.”

Osamu had rolled his eyes, climbed to his feet, and made his way out of the concert hall. The people don’t notice him as he backed out through the beginning rows, but he started attracting more and more eyes as he proceeded. His strides grew faster.

When he made it to the second to last row, a man reached out and grabbed his arm.

Osamu turned his head to face the dream-figure. He’s a background character, someone Atsumu’s brain had seen once and reused. It always throws them off when he looks at them face on in his brother’s dreams - he looks like Atsumu, but the dream figments sense his otherness.

The man had faltered upon seeing his face, and Osamu had broken away and forced himself through the hall’s door: right into another dream.

Kita’s head was orderly. His dreams, from what Osamu observed that night, progressed for the same amount of time. They were realistic, enough so that Osamu saw himself a few times.

Dream-Osamu looked in his direction, and he ducked away.

After a few too many close calls, he’d left Kita-san’s dreams and shoved his way through the others in rapid succession, following the tug of the dream threads to find his teammates. Osamu stayed long enough to familiarize his mind with theirs, then moved on.

When he slipped into the last dream, Osamu had felt that _otherness_ that he always feels when he’s in someone else’s dream, the dripping feeling of his consciousness mingling with their unconsciousness. If he stays too long, it feels like water torture.

This, though, this wasn’t water - it was more like black sludge, leaking into him and filling him up.

 _Who is this?,_ Osamu thought through the liquid.

There was a pulse through the blurriness, then dizzying certainty. _Suna._

“Suna?” Osamu had called, forgetting himself through their mingled minds, and choked. The darkness spasmed, angry and fearful, and a jolt spread through his stomach, like the dip when you forget something important.

Suna’s head is _filled_ with screaming.

More importantly is what his head isn’t filled with: Suna himself.

Osamu had woken in a panic, launched out of the dream by something other than his own volition, and stared at Suna for a long time.

His blanket was a constricting heat, but throwing it off and facing the world bare seemed suddenly inadvisable and panic inducing. _Take a deep breath,_ Osamu had advised himself, resigned to staying awake and in his own head.

Beside him, Suna had curled tighter on the ground. His dream thread coiled around his sleeping form, as if it was a guard instead of a trail to follow, wrapping himself in.

Osamu had felt guilty for being relieved.

 _No more,_ he’d promised himself. _No more dream travelling, or invadin’ other people’s heads and combining my mind with theirs._

And he’s kept that promise, mostly. But it’s hard to keep promises when you’re the only one to hold yourself accountable.

Osamu plucks at the dream thread that connects him to his mother. It’s firm, not tenuous like it would be if she was a stranger, but it’s tainted by what he’s come to recognize is drug-induced sleep. He’s been in her head when she takes sleeping pills before.

It’s still a dream, so he can still travel into it, but it’s even more unpleasant than others. The urge to travel is an unscratchable itch, only soothed by being outside his own head. Still, it’s not worth going into his mother’s when she’s in this state.

He already knows what he’ll find: hazy fragments of her past, phasing in and out of focus. She’s always the focus of these memory-dream fuses, and they change quick as lightning, the woman herself spinning back and forth quicker than he can safely follow.

The first time Osamu entered her dreams when she was like that, he almost got stuck.

The thing about his trips is that he has to follow the person - it’s their mind, after all. If he can’t track them through the dream shifts, he can get trapped there. But he can’t be spotted by the dream’s owner, either, unless he wants to have some very awkward conversations.

Osamu and Atsumu are the only ones who know that they have this; this thing that sets them apart from each other and from the rest of the world. Osamu travels, and Atsumu understands.

Sometimes, he sees his dream self.

His dream self never sees him. Something tells him he has to keep it that way.

“Mornin’,” Atsumu yawns, stumbling into the kitchen the next day. Osamu hands him a dish for breakfast. “Aw, ‘Sumu, yer gonna make someone such a good house husband someday.”

“Shut yer ass up,” Osamu orders, ladling out his own breakfast. He’s always up earlier. There’s no point in staying asleep any longer than he has to - he has to leave before Atsumu wakes up, and staying in his own head isn’t much of an alternative.

So. He has time to make breakfast, and lunch. Whatever.

Atsumu throws his backpack together haphazardly, yanks on his shoes, and shovels food into his mouth. It’s hard to believe he’s the older twin when he does shit like this (so, all the time).

He pauses at the door. “Rested this time?”

Osamu considers. “Yea.”

Travelling can at once be tiring and rejuvenating - there’s a reason he doesn’t put one hundred percent into volleyball. He can’t afford it.

Still, Atsumu’s head is helpful (though Osamu’ll never tell him, he likes his brother’s head to fit through doors). Rejuvenating, especially after months of staying dreamless. Evidently, people notice.

“You’re energetic today,” Kita-san notices.

Osamu shrugs in lieu of a reply. “Must’a gotten a good night’s sleep.”

Suna is standing in the back when Osamu walks over. His eyes are the same color they always are, but when he looks into them, they’re dark as night. “You’re not tired.”

“Not today.” Osamu lets the silence hang between them like a spiderweb - fragile, time consuming, easy to break with one well placed swipe.

“Why is that?”

He stiffens. “Slept well.”

“Mm.” Suna doesn’t mince words, Osamu knows. They’re alike in that way: energy is to be conserved, not exerted unnecessarily. 

“Yer not gonna let this go, are ya.” It’s a statement, not a question.

Suna levels him with a measured glance. “Am I?”

He wants to throw something. He wants to punch the wall, or tear the net, or do something else to leave a lasting impression. He wants to stay, instead of rolling off like water.

Maybe Osamu doesn’t want Suna to let this go after all.

“Why aren’t ya in yer own head?” Osamu demands, watching for a change. _It’ll be in the eyes,_ he thinks, somewhat wildly. _Ya hypocrite._

Suna stares at him. Unimpressed. “Like you’re in yours?”

“I’m tryin’ ta stop,” he says. His voice reeks of desperation.

“Miya! Suna!” Kita-san calls, somehow without it seeming like he’s raising his voice. “Warm up!”

Osamu’s head is spinning.

.  
.  
.

“The hell was that?” Atsumu needles as they walk out, standing close enough that they can whisper.

Osamu rubs his forehead. It’s too hot. “Dunno.”

“Ya gotta give me more than that,” his brother frowns. “Looked like yeh were tryin’ ta crawl outta yer own skin.”

Maybe he was. Maybe it’d be easier to be Atsumu, or Kita-san, or - well. Osamu’s been in Suna’s head, and he doesn’t feel inclined to go back.

“Not used to gettin’ this much rest.” Osamu suggests, tapping his fingers silently on the doorframe as he enters his classroom. “Get ta class, ‘Tsumu.”

“One of us’s gotta keep up the good grades!” Atsumu cackles. 

Osamu takes his seat. Takes out his notebook. Takes careful note of Suna. He doesn’t take anything else - those are his, and his alone for the next class.

He closes his eyes, though he feels more awake than he has in ages, and lets his mind go quiet. There’s a dull humming, the half asleep dreamyness of first period. The dream threads don’t pluck at him so much as stroke, gossamer connecting him to the student body instead of his own.

Suna’s thread is knotted before it can reach him. Maybe Osamu’s feeling brave, or reckless, but for whatever reason he reaches out and tugs at it, undoing the tangles.

In the background, Suna coughs.

Once he’s pulled the string out and unknotted it, Osamu sets it down. He sketches a haphazard drawing of a volleyball in his notebook as their teacher starts the lesson.

_Miya Osamu._

_Suna’d better not talk like that, or he’d get caught,_ Osamu thinks to himself. The threads stir around him, agitated, and Suna’s jolts.

His breath catches. Suna’s string convulses, once, twice, and Osamu can feel it like his own heartstring. It crumples together, then, in the space of a blink, it ties itself back up. Around him, everyone’s threads tangle.

Suna reaches into his bag for a water bottle and drinks it down.

Osamu turns slightly in his seat to look back at him. His eyes are unreadable, face blank. _Meet me after practice today,_ Suna mouths, and Osamu is helpless to refuse.

It’s a long day of schoolwork and dream threads doing the normal things before Osamu pulls his twin aside with a hushed “Things’re gettin’ freaky.”

“They’re always freaky with ya around,” Atsumu jokes, but he follows Osamu out.

Suna is standing against the wall, leaning in a way that looks like he’s levitating, and the light catches his eyes and makes the color bleed. It’s artistic, in a sense - Suna flows outward as his dream thread coils inward. Tranquil, dare he say.

Atsumu throws a pebble at him.

“Ouch,” Suna replies, instinctually. The pebble’s too small to inflict more than a brief sting.

Osamu, in turn, throws a pebble at Atsumu, who hisses. “Let’s go.”

“Where’re we goin’?” Atsumu complains. (Rightfully so, perhaps, but Osamu doesn’t care.) “Ya haven’t told me anythin’!”

“‘Cause yer a dramatic little shit,” Osamu replies. “We’re goin’ on the swings.”

Atsumu shudders. “That creepy, abandoned playground?”

“Scared of some ghosts?” Suna taunts, bag thrown over his shoulder. It’s at a particular angle, one Osamu feels at once like he should know and knows that he couldn’t possibly.

His twin growls, stomping ahead with his hands in his pockets, and hunches his shoulders up to his ears. “If we die, and I’m stuck with yer ugly mug for all eternity, I’m gonna kill ya.”

“It’s true, Osamu, your face is terrible.” Suna says peacefully. “The only way it could be worse is if your hair was yellow.”

“Get out,” Atsumu pouts. “Least I don’t have a fox face.”

“This face isn’t a fox’s.” Suna informs him.

Atsumu doesn’t seem to notice the inflection. _This_ face. Osamu brushes up against Suna’s shoulder by accident, feels cold fabric, and shudders. _His hands are probably cold,_ Osamu thinks idly. Suna’s hands and nails are small, sharp like his features.

The swings are Osamu’s favorite spot, despite the fact that he never goes there in real life. Somehow, they show up in people’s dreams. Atsumu himself has swung on them a few times, though he never seems to remember when he wakes. Osamu always stands and watches.

“You swinging?” Suna asks, eyes trained on him. Laser focused. 

Osamu looks at him, seated on the swing, hands wrapped around the chains. “A bit.”

“Well, if we die, I’m gonna go out swingin’ halfway to the moon,” Atsumu grumbles, launching himself off the ground and into the air. Osamu supposes there can’t be anything seriously wrong with the swings if his twin is on them, with his strange sense of danger. He sits between the other two boys.

Suna uses one foot to push himself back and forth, a gradual and hypnotic motion. “Try to unravel it.”

Osamu doesn’t disrespect him by pretending he doesn’t understand. Instead, he concentrates on the thread next to him. Suna’s string is coiled tight around him, but it lapses when Osamu picks at it. Beside him, Atsumu goes higher and higher, reaching a single hand for the clouds.

“There,” Osamu finishes, a shiver running through him, and Suna exhales in a steady puff of steam. The air is cold, as is the metal of the chain, and Suna’s breath is warm.

The thread seizes, then stretches to mingle with Atsumu’s. The setter lets out a noise of surprise as his swing stops.

Osamu stares down at the strings. “That’s not supposed to happen.”

“I suppose not,” Suna agrees, blinking as if he hasn’t blinked in years. Osamu tries and fails to remember the last time Suna closed his eyes.

“I feel all… feral.” Atsumu complains, trying in vain to start his momentum again. “What’d ya do to me, ‘Samu?”

“Well, I’m tryna fix it,” Osamu snaps back. He picks at the string again. “Ah. They’re different.”

“I resent that,” Suna tells Atsumu, tossing a wood chip at him. It’s soggy, though they haven’t had rain in weeks.

Suna’s string, now that it’s coiled with Atsumu’s, looks a bit more orange. Atsumu’s is more of a yellow shade in contrast. If he’d had to pick the colors out of a lineup, if he didn’t know what they were by virtue of the dream threads, he’d never be able to - but they’re clear as he separates them.

“My head’s a bit quieter,” Suna remarks, speeding up his swing. Atsumu’s momentum increases in sync, despite the fact that he’s given up. Osamu gives a last yank to the threads as Suna watches. (He always seems to be watching.)

His pulse picks up, just a bit, and he attributes it to the swing.

Atsumu snorts. “Combined with mine? Yer jokin’.”

Suna shrugs. “Maybe.”

“Oh,” Osamu mumbles, strings finally separated and cooperating, “there’s a fox.”

“It’s yer family,” Atsumu jeers at Suna, flopping backwards to stare at the animal, and gets a facefull of wood chips. “Shit, my hair!”

Osamu eyes him unimpressedly. “Not like it can get any worse.”

Suna watches the fox grow closer than foxes typically do, skittering on the edges of the playground. It sits, scratches its muzzle in frustration, and sets a paw inside the gates. The animal hisses and recoils, fluffing its tail at them once before bounding into the woods.

“Maybe it’s paw is hurt or somethin’,” Atsumu frowns, sitting up. “Should we go after it?”

“No.” Another example of what might be a suggestion - could have been, if it were someone else or some other time. Suna’s eyes shine shallow and bright.

Osamu acquiesces. “Foxes don’t live in these woods, do they?”

“Maybe you dreamed it,” Suna says, and Osamu tightens his fingers around the links until they sting.

.  
.  
.

His eyes are dry and wide. The ceiling’s shades of darkness shift, swelling and dispersing in time to Atsumu’s snores. _Fuckin’ ‘Tsumu,_ Osamu thinks, throwing his pillow over his head, and flutters his eyelashes into his pillowcase. It’s not like he wants to sleep, but he doesn’t want to listen to his brother make noises like a dying hippo either.

When he closes his eyes, they hurt more than if he’d left them open.

Osamu inhales, exhales, and drops into unconsciousness. Falling asleep is far too easy - like it’s his natural state instead of a temporary stop. The dream threads tug at him, tweaking his mind, but he shoves them away. Atsumu’s string is interwoven with tiny fibers of Suna’s, scratchy to the touch, while their mother’s is loose and soft like silk.

The darkness of the ceiling drains to the pure black of his head - the absence of light, the absence of dreams. He shoves the two threads away. They give off a soft glow, lights forming patterns that play over his eyelids when he closes them (his dream-self’s eyelids?).

With a roll of his shoulders, Osamu resigns himself to another night of emptiness.

_Miya Osamu._

“Geez, Suna.” Osamu mumbles, rubbing his hand over his eyes. “Yer gonna get caught by the teacher if you keep -”

His eyes snap open.

There’s a tiny fox in front of him, orange with yellow tints. It trots primly up to him and sits on its hindquarters. Osamu eyes it with no small amount of trepidation.

“... Suna?” he repeats, watching its eyes. They’re not the same as Suna’s - a little darker, a little wilder - but the narrow slant is there. It _feels_ like Suna.

The fox flicks its tail. _Well. Who else could it be?_

“And yer in my head.” Osamu’s eyes widen. “Yer in _my_ head.”

 _Who’s head would I be in?_ Suna inquires, elegant. _My own?_

Now that he says it, the suggestion seems preposterous. Osamu drops to the ground, settles cross legged by Suna, and leans back on his hands. “Well, why arncha?”

_Why do you leave yours?_

“I dunno.” Osamu wrinkles his nose. “I don’t like it much.”

A noise that must be the fox equivalent of a laugh. _Then why do you keep doing it?_

And therein lies the issue. Because he doesn’t _know_. Osamu doesn’t know why he can dream travel in the first place, doesn’t know how to stop, doesn’t know how to feel at home in his own skin. Once, he looked up how long a human can last without dreaming. His search provided results: evidently, there are ‘groups of individuals who never recall their dreams or do not dream’.

Once. It’s perhaps _(absolutely)_ an understatement.

“Why are you a fox?” Osamu retorts, gaze fixed on the tip of Suna’s tail.

Suna flicks it. _Because that’s what I am. Why aren’t you happy as what **you** are?_

“Why are you here, Suna.”

_Maybe I’m not. Maybe you’re dreaming._

Osamu sits bolt upright, chest heaving, and throws his blankets across the room. He’s sweating like he just ran a marathon. “What the fuck.”

“Nah, Kita-san, ‘course I can handle being captain next year,” Atsumu mumbles from the upper bunk. Still asleep, of course. Atsumu takes every bit of sleep he can get, as if he unconsciously thinks he can make up for what Osamu’s missing. Osamu’s not even sure his twin realizes he does it, but he naps twice as much when Osamu’s out of it.

“I don’t dream,” he tells himself firmly, and gets up to make breakfast.

Soft music begins to play as Osamu rustles through their fridge for juice, and he lifts his head as if he can see where it’s coming from. He’s fairly certain he didn’t leave a radio or alarm on, but he closes the fridge and goes to check nonetheless.

The noise is coming from his mother’s room, which is odd in itself. She never plays music - claims it gives her headaches. Osamu knocks, quietly, just once, and the music falters, then swells.

“Ma?” he whispers, edging around the door and into her room. “You up?”

Her sleeping form doesn’t rustle.

Osamu exhales slowly, scrubbing a hand through his hair, and sets about looking for whatever’s causing the noise. Maybe she’s left her phone on. When he lifts a final pile of clothes and has to admit that maybe it’s something else, her dream thread tugs at him. He goes to bat it away, then pauses.

The music pulses along the thread, stretching out from his mother’s mind. As if bolstered by his realization, the orchestra increases its volume again, colors swelling from her prone body. Osamu sucks in a breath and watches as the swirls of blue and pink wisp from her.

_Let’s find out just how far I’ll go… To look like someone you should know…_

His mother is singing in her dreams.

_Maybe I’d sound a little better… If my features were more sweet…_

Osamu recalls, somewhat wildly, the last time he’d heard her sing: a few days before their father had died without warning, two years ago. The event he and Atsumu had compartmentalized and shoved away, and their mother hadn’t.

_I’ll do it if I have to… Hoping for an inbetween… Not what I meant when I said that… I wanted to be seen…_

The whispered song trails from her in small bursts, fading in some verses and returning for others. Osamu runs his hands over the thread and it shivers with joy. His fingers coax out more lyrics, as if he’s playing an instrument, and his hands tremble.

_And in the end will I feel proud… That I grit my teeth, and followed the damn crowd… Will I have grown a little empire… Or made a fucking mess…_

“Ma,” Osamu chokes out, “Ma, you’re - you’re dreaming.”

The song dims, colors paling, and her thread curls back around her head.

Was that when this started? When dream traveling had started to seem like a curse, instead of another talent to improve upon?

He swipes at his eyes. “Is dad where you are?”

The song continues to fade, until it’s almost no longer noticeable.

Osamu has been in a lot of dreams - his mother’s, scattered with memories, his brother’s, dotted with ruminations on past failures and future successes, Suna’s hellscape of a dream world. He doesn’t remember his father’s. Surely he’d have visited?

His father is the forefront of his mother’s dreams more often than not. Atsumu’s unconsciousness is as unwilling to face the truth of his death any more than his consciousness is.

“I’m going back to bed,” Osamu tells his mother, her voice spilling into his ears.

.  
.  
.

The next morning, Atsumu walks in holding a duck.

“Where did that come from,” Osamu deadpans, holding a spatula out in front of him like a sword.

Atsumu sets the duck on the table. “I was hopin’ you’d know.”

“‘Tumu,” Osamu pleads, “if you stole a duck, I won’t tell on ya. We’ll just find a way to return it, real sneaky like.”

“I dunno what happened.” Atsumu explains (or rather doesn’t), frowning at the duck as it attempts to eat a salt shaker. “I was just dreamin’ about a pond, feeding geese, and when I woke up -”

He waves a hand helplessly at the bird.

“Duck,” Osamu says.

“Duck.” Atsumu repeats.

“Hello, boys,” their mother hums absently as she enters the kitchen, giving a cursory glance to the waterfowl on the table. “Found a pet, have you?”

“Mom,” Atsumu chokes out, slightly stunned. “Yer up.”

“I know they’ve had me on the night shifts for ages now,” she sighs, “but last night I got to sleep as soon as I got into bed! I had a rather nice dream, too.”

“Were ya singing?” Osamu asks. At some point, he’s started holding his breath, and Atsumu’s started breathing faster.

Their mother hesitates, one hand resting on the coffee machine. “Yes. Yes, I think I was.”

Atsumu opens his mouth. Closes it again. “Did it help?”

“I suppose so.” She smiles sadly.

“We have ta get to school,” Osamu tells her, “But we’ll - we’ll talk to ya later, okay?”

“Alright,” she says, bemused.

“The duck,” Atsumu reminds him once they’re out the door.

Osamu rolls his eyes. “Ya pulled it out of yer dream. Or I did, I’m not sure.”

“Ya haven’t done that before, have ya?” Atsumu inquires, voice louder than it strictly should be.

“No.” Osamu turns his eyes toward the gym, where Suna will surely be waiting. “No, I haven’t.”

When they walk into school, Osamu almost falls to his knees. Everyone’s dream threads, usually dormant from being technically awake, are spreading and mixing and _stabbing._ Suna stands in the center of the hallway, waiting.

“What’s happenin’?” Atsumu hisses. His arm hair is standing on end - as if he, too, can tell something strange is going on.

Suna steps over to them in careful, practiced movements. “They’re stuck in the inbetween.”

Osamu digs his fingers into his sweatshirt. Suna lifts his hand slightly and rests it on the small of his back, and he remembers to breathe in struggling bursts. “I’m pullin’ the inbetween out with me.”

“The inbetween can’t come back to your head anymore,” Suna corrects.

“Do you - do the same thing I do?” Osamu asks, voice lowered too far for normal speech but louder than a whisper. Suna lifts a shoulder.

Atsumu snorts, loudly, and shoves the two of them in the direction of the gym. “Well, fix it, won’t ya?”

“What, I’ll take a nap in the middla practice?” Osamu laughs. Atsumu stares at him in response. “”Tsumu. ‘Tsumu, what about the duck.”

“Put it back in my head,” Atsumu suggests, like it’s that easy.

“I’ll help,” Suna says quietly. Osamu turns to look at him, eyes far away, and his friend looks back.

It’s a simple thing, to look back, or at least it should be. (Too simple, sometimes.) To look back at memories, at a destination or goal, at another person. And yet, Osamu doesn’t think he’s been looked at quite like this. Like Suna’s not just looking, but seeing.

He flicks his eyes towards the gym. “Time ta sleep, then.”

“I’ll lock up and take the keys with me,” Atsumu smirks, swinging the keys to the storage locker around his finger. “Ha. Figured I’d lock ya into a room sooner or later, but I didn’t think it’d be for this.”

“If you’d anticipated this exact scenario, I’d have been concerned.” Suna says dryly.

Osamu flips him off and leans against the wall.

The storage locker is small, because they already have an equipment room. Suna settles beside him, their arms close but not touching, and Osamu looks at him without turning his head. _What are you,_ he thinks, because he feels like maybe if he understands that he can understand whatever’s going on now.

Suna curls into himself like a fox. “I’m a kitsune.”

“What does that mean?” It’s uncanny how he can do that. Osamu knows what a kitsune is, knows what they can do (he’s had a lot of time for random internet searches), but they’re legends, conventionally. Kitsune are typically said to have supernatural abilities like possession, generating fire or lightning, willful manifestation in the dreams of others, and powerful illusions.

“It’s all still real,” Suna sighs, the words trailing from his mouth like smoke.

Osamu blinks. “Can you _read my mind?_ ”

“No,” he replies, with a brief twitch of his nose. “You’re just loud.”

“Atsumu’s the loud one,” Osamu corrects, pressing his shoulders into the wall. The concrete is cold as he spreads them.

Suna shakes his head. “He’s loud outside. You’re loud inside. Your face is loud.”

“Like you’re loud inside?”

A rumbling noise spreads through the room, a sort of purring laugh that Osamu’s never heard from Suna before. “I got separated from my clan a while back.”

Kitsune, once separated, will become loners. They’ll stay away from people, stick to themselves. They don’t trust easily. And yet here he is.

“So you enter a high school and join clubs?” Osamu’s mouth twitches up at the corner.

Suna’s mouth twitches up on the opposite side.

He knows who Suna is. Carefully, Osamu presses his arm up against his.

“We really should sleep before Atsumu starts releasing more ducks into the gym.” Suna whispers.

The kitsune’s eyes close. He doesn’t even look unguarded in his sleep - brow furrowed slightly, lips pressed together, lashes fluttering as his eyes move. Suna’s arms are crossed, like he expects an attack.

“I’m th’ only one in here,” Osamu grumbles. “I’m not goin’ to jump ya.”

Suna’s eyes shift under the lids in an attempt to look at him without opening them. In a hurried, inelegant motion, he turns so his back is pressed up against Osamu’s side. The spiker exhales through his nose and closes his own eyes.

When he opens them, he’s back in his own head. Threads extend, taunt, connecting him to the school’s inhabitants. Osamu plucks at the ones belonging to his team as if playing an instrument.

 _What do you have planned?_ Suna asks, back in kitsune form.

In response, Osamu grabs the nearest string and snaps it.

The thread _wails,_ flailing in the air like a snake, and falls defeated to the floor. Suna looks on in horror as Osamu coughs, choking on something rising from his throat, and he extends his hands to see the string reconnect, thicker than ever.

“That felt wrong,” Osamu spits out.

Suna flicks his tail and bites at the thread, but even his sharp teeth can’t puncture it. Osamu somehow knows that he can break it again if he tries.

Instead, he grabs Aran’s thread and ties it to Kita’s, binds the team’s threads together. Then he ties in the coach, weaves the faculty together, and groups the classes. Suna stands by, snapping at misbehaving strands and nudging them into the appropriate piles.

Osamu spends what feels like days binding dream threads together. Finally, he comes to Suna’s.

Suna watches him expectantly. _What’re you waiting for?_

“If I do this -” he hesitates. “Then you won’t be able to rejoin your pack, will you?”

 _Who says I don’t have a pack?_ Suna flicks one ear, a purely animal mannerism. Then he walks over to his thread and looks at it, a purely Suna mannerism.

Osamu lays a finger on the strand. “Because foxes ‘just show up’ at playgrounds all the time, clearly searching for you.”

He shrugs. _I didn’t say I was pack with them._ With that, Suna nudges his string into the pile of volleyball players’ threads.

“Yer so damn cheesy,” Osamu snorts, picking up the string and winding it around the others.

There are about thirty groups of threads, stretching out, and none of them are pulling at him. Maybe he’s inadvertently given away his powers, or given them to somebody else. To Osamu’s surprise, his heart sinks at the thought.

He opens his eyes to find Suna sleeping next to him. “Oi. Suna.”

“Don’t wake up so quickly,” Suna complains. “I could get stuck.”

“Sorry,” he tells him, slinging an arm around his shoulders and hoisting them both upright. 

Atsumu knocks on the door. “You two alrigh’ in there? It’s been twenty minutes, ya lazy lumps.”

“Twenty minutes?” Osamu sputters, pushing the door into Atsumu’s stomach as he unlocks it. “That’s it?”

“Shame. I thought we could do it in seventeen.” Suna comments, breezing past them into the gym.

“Th’ duck’s gone, so I figured that was a good sign,” Atsumu announces. “I named it Quackers.”

“I think I fixed it,” Osamu mutters, incredulous.

His brother pounds him on the back and follows Suna. “Knew we could do it.”

“Ya didn’t do jack shit!”

.  
.  
.

Osamu doesn’t want to fall asleep tonight, either.

This time, it’s not because he’s afraid he might travel - it’s because he’s afraid he won’t. What if he closes his eyes and the threads (his connection to his mother’s voice, to his brother’s mind laid bare) are gone?

But Atsumu’s snores are as good an incentive as any to fall unconscious, so he closes his eyes.

 _Took you long enough._ Suna - human Suna, this time - observes, seated alone in the darkness. His eyes glow slightly, like a cat’s. _Cat’s eyes are reflective,_ Osamu remembers. _There’s got to be light in here somewhere._

He reaches out a hand and, after a moment of consideration, Suna allows himself to be helped up.

 _Where are we going tonight?_ The kitsune asks, looping his arm through Osamu’s.

Osamu runs his free hand over the strings, connecting him to everyone and everything. “Depends on them.”

**Author's Note:**

> catch me on tumblr |a href=https://socially-acceptable-username.tumblr.com/|here/a|
> 
> let me know what you thought?


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